Progressive Librarianship

Library of Alexandria

It contained a great repository of writings from all over the world and a lot of fat and happy librarians who got to wear long flowing comfortable robes and didn't even have a need for so-called "casual" Fridays.

The Library of Alexandria had zero public access terminals and no photocopying machine. Life was good.

History: Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan

Ranganathan is considered the father of library science ... in India.

Just as Dewey thought that there was one God [231], and all the other religions got stuffed together in the 290s, we also think there is one "Father Of Library Science" and another "Father of Library Science, Indian"

Ranganathan proposed Five Laws of Library Science which brought the idea of user services to the forefront of library discourse...

History: Ranganathan, Remixed

This list has been adapted recently to the web world. See Lennart's page for the rest of it, but most notably he said:

Save the time of the surfer

Ranganathan had a rich professional life unblemished by scandal, quickie resignations, unseemly affairs, or harrassment allegations at ALA conferences. He never talked smack about library patrons and would always tell them what time it was, even when he was sitting right next to the clock.

Other Not So Nice Guys

Various upstarts -- noticing the general disconnect between the Dewey method of efficiency at all costs versus personal, human interactions with the people who keep our libraries open -- caused all manner of troubles over the years. ALA-SRRT was founded.

Sometimes the troublemakers got together and -- with the help of lefty sympathist publishers and printers -- got the word out.

Revolting Librarians Redux

KR and I read Revolting Librarians in our otherwise straight-laced library schools and realized that there was a life beyond learning Dialog queries and memorizing SUDOCS numbers, that we could use our library powers for good.

We met at a SRRT meeting sitting in the back of the room making fun of an ALA presidential candidate [no one you know] roughly ten years ago.

KR got the epiphany to do a sequel to the book while in the shower, I talked my way into it at a later date.

Revolting Librarians Redux Redux

It's a cliche, but also mostly true to say the book pretty much wrote itself.

Except for being screamed at by the occasional special librarian, or having to leave messages after a writer's answering machine said "Send me a rainbow...!" It was incredibly easy to corral a bunch of disgruntled information professionals into doing something helpful and useful, for no real reward other than our undying gratitude and a free copy or two.

They tell us the book has sold a thousand copies. People write us email saying thanks. And each time some cranky pain-in-the-ass know-it-all college student decides to go to library school, we feel like we're doing our job.